Tuesday, October 08, 2013

New Technique Identifies Novel Class of Cancer's Drivers

New Technique Identifies Novel Class of Cancer's Drivers

It was only a matter of time that modern DNA sequencing methods would be able to uncover some "use" of the enormous amount of non-coding DNA in our genome. We still have so much to learn! But, this is a great step.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

How people learn - The Week

I'm posting this article for my own reminder about the importance of teaching in a way that maximizes student learning.

I've made a remarkable number of changes over the past year with my teaching tools and techniques. Yet, I still find myself occasionally drifting back to old habits -- giving a standard, boring lecture where I expect my students to sit there, pay attention and take notes for 52 minutes of class. Fortunately, this is certainly becoming the exception and not the norm.

Regardless, research is continuing to emerge about how ineffective this traditional approach is on the majority of students. However, I don't believe it is ineffective for everyone. After all, the vast majority of my undergraduate years were all completed by taking courses where I had to sit through lectures where the professor delivered the material for the entire class with talking and an overhead as their primary tools. I did it. It worked for me, yet I can't help but wonder how much more enjoyable some of my undergraduate years would have been if I had some active learning....